Printer Not printing on black correctly

[xZGxFire]

Printer: WorkForce WF-3640
Whenever I use black ink, the text on the paper doesnt have the same opacity on all lines and theres white horizontal marks that doesnt include the text that was supposed to be there. Basicly white horizontal strikes.
What I have done and tested:

I printed some text from word on color and it came great.
I alinged the print heads.
I made the cleaning clogged printhead like 5 times.
I tried cleaning the print heads manually with alcohol, I even used a straw to blow inside and a plastic syringe. Black ink came out, a lot....
I took out fast printing incthe settings and nothing worked.
I adjusted the margins of paper and in the documents.

My question to you guys in tomshardware,:" Do you think that the black cartrige is the problem?" It has a 1/4 of ink level and they arent even originals. The owner of the printer told me that she hasnt used the printer in a couple of months. (Its an inkjet so I assume that cartriges may go bad and they dont print the same. But in this case, color texts or docs print perfectly."

 

[canadianvice]

Hi. I've worked at Staples for like a billion years, and this is a chronic problem.

I'd be very cautious about buying a new cartridge to test this, because unfortunately many places will not return it since it's a consumable. It'd be like pulling milk off a shelf, opening it, and then asking to return it, just so you get the idea.

My experience suggests it's probably a bad black cartridge, but here's the thing: there is so much that can go wrong with cheap inkjets, least of all with those of uncertain histories, and it's very difficult to figure out precisely what did.

What kind of printing do you do? Honestly, it's usually a better idea to just get a new printer than it is to try and fix one because a single cart may well cost you as much as a new printer. Admittedly, they don't come with full ink anymore, but it's painful to spend $40 on troubleshooting for it not to work and the money to be wasted.

I *suspect* the black cart could be the problem - inkjets don't play nicely with non-OEM carts. I'm not just saying that as some propagandist, it's also been a chronic issue when I was working for Staples. The inkjets are designed to make them as finicky as possible about non-oem supplies, and while that is indeed BS, it doesn't change the fact they don't like non-oem.

You can try replacing the cart, but I have to caution you that it costs a fair amount of money to do that properly, and you're unlikely to obtain a refund (in NA, at least) if it fails to work, so it'd be wasted money.

My honest to god advice is generally not to try fixing printers by replacing carts. It's almost never been a happy story for people when I was employed there. These printers are for better or worse disposable, and if you walked into your local tech shop you could probably find a brand new one for all the trouble you'd put into trying to fix this one.

 

[xZGxFire]

The thing is, that I dont want to make the owner of the printer waste money. I will try to unclog once more tomorrow and see if it fixes.

 

[xZGxFire]

Also, when printing a full doc there are lines in between that arent printed, maybe every 1-3 lines or so.